Imagine Wenatchee event conjures a bright vision for the City’s future

WENATCHEE — Inside the Mercantile at 14 North Wenatchee Avenue, there’s a lot more than you might expect other than what you can see through the window. As a cooperative working space, it looks like a place to bring your laptop and finally get that report done or finish the chapter you’re writing.

What’s really inside is a collaborative working environment with more than a dozen tiny offices, where you can meet with people from all sorts of businesses in Wenatchee. And at Thursday’s “Imagine Wenatchee” event, that’s exactly what happened, only with essentially every planning institution involved in the cultural and commercial renaissance that’s happening right now in the Valley.

At the two-hour open house-style gathering, there was only a brief introduction from Rick Wray, the owner of the Mercantile, and Todd Kiesz, who organized the event. Kiesz was bursting with excitement, telling the crowd “We stand at a remarkable time in our Valley. This probably never happened before, and may never happen again, where we’re getting this incredible fabric of things that are going on.”

One by one and from south to north in town, Kiesz introduced each of the presenters: Weidner Apartment Homes, with their new Majestic development along Mission Street; the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center, who are developing a community center and an expansion to the existing museum; and the YMCA, who are going to redevelop the old building on Orondo between the one-ways into something they believe will be remarkable.

Further north, the downtown Convention Center remodel and rebuild was listed, which is anticipated as something that will bring people together as a community center of its own; the PUD campus from before their move to the far north end of town, as well as the new YMCA location just below it on Fifth. Then Kiesz started moving back south in a loop along the soon-to-be-built Electric Avenue, a new road between the old PUD campus and the new YMCA beginning at Fifth and connecting to Columbia Street’s north end just after Whitman Way, with its panoply of underground utilities like fiber and water treatment hidden under a picturesque, pedestrian-friendly street reminiscent of Riverside Drive, the anchor street of the Riverside District just north of the new road, between Fifth and Ninth along Riverfront Park.

Just the new road alone will connect the three large apartment complexes that comprise the Riverside District: Riverside 9, which contains two restaurants, a massage studio, a hair salon, a yoga studio and a brewpub; 600 Riverside, the complex between the two roundabouts that also houses a restaurant and an engineering firm across from ample free public parking; and just a few blocks away — after another brewpub, a pool hall, a church, the only restaurant located directly on the Loop Trail, and a host of other small businesses in the Riverfront Center — the largest of the three, the Riverfront Village complex, which ends just where Riverside Drive becomes Worthen Street.

That’s an entire community of up to 2,400 residents counting the actual houses in the area as well connected to downtown by more than just the Loop Trail — you’ll be able to walk (or jog, bike or drive) on a street that has all the charm, architecture and landscaping that runs through Riverside. And at the south end of Electric Avenue? The new Columbia Center.

The “Craft District,” as the city is calling it now, will be a repurposing of more than 130,000 square feet of formerly agricultural warehouse space along Columbia Street purchased by the Port of Chelan in 2019, imagined now as a vibrant downtown district. That area, when plans are more concrete, will merit its own story but as a mention in this article, we’ll note that the stretch of property between Orondo Avenue and Yakima Street along Columbia street west of the train tracks is possibly the most exciting aspect of this entire new vision of Wenatchee.

There is, of course, all of the nearly-completed projects that the PUD is wrapping up as part of the Fifth Street Redevelopment, including the new pavilion and splash pad at Riverfront Park, the new stage at Pybus to expand the live music and shows that already happen at the Public Market, and the new access points on both sides of the W.T. Clark Pipeline Bridge that tie all of this together.

But these things add up to a reinvigorated Wenatchee that fosters sustainable growth, environmental-friendly reuse of historic buildings, job opportunities in both the building phase of all of this and the new businesses that will occupy the space, increased tourism and a thriving culture that preserves Wenatchee’s history while taking the city into the years to come full speed ahead.

As Kiesz said when he wrapped up his presentation, “This is our time, and this is the way to understand how important time is for all of us.” More time spent with friends and family in the heart of our city only makes it feel more like home.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media